The light of day

10

For a minute or two I couldn’t believe that it had happened, and kept looking back through the window expecting to see that the Peugeot was following after all. It wasn’t. Fischer was swearing and massaging his left shoulder where the door had caught him. Miller was grinning to himself as if at some private joke. As we bounced over the tramlines onto the Galata Bridge, I gave up looking back and stared at the floor. At my feet, amid some wood shavings, there were torn pieces of an Athens newspaper.

Of the six packing cases in the van, three were being used as seats. From the way the other three vibrated and slid about they appeared to be empty. From the way Miller and Fischer were having to hold on to steady themselves on the corners, it looked as if their cases were empty, too. Mine was more steady. It seemed likely that the case that I was sitting on now held the grenades, the pistols, and the ammunition that had come from Athens inside the doors of the car. I wished the whole lot would blow up then and there. It didn’t even occur to me, then, to wonder how they were going to be used. I had enough to think of with my own troubles.

As Harper drove past Aya Sophia and headed towards the gate in the old Seraglio wall, he began to talk over his shoulder to us.

“Leo goes first. Hans and Arthur together a hundred yards behind him. Arthur, you pay for Hans so that he doesn’t have to fumble for money with those bandages on. Right?”

“Yes.”

He drove through into the Courtyard of the Janissaries and pulled up under the trees opposite St. Irene.

“I’m not taking you any nearer to the entrance,” he said. “There’ll be guides hanging around and we don’t want them identifying you with this van. On your way, Leo. See you tonight.”

Miller got out and walked towards the Ortakapi Gate. He had about a hundred and fifty yards to go.

When he had covered half the distance, Harper said: “Okay, you two. Get ready. And, Arthur, you watch yourself. Leo and Hans both have guns and they’ll use them if you start getting out of line in any way.”

“I will think of the two thousand dollars.”

“You do that. I’ll be right behind you now, just to see that you make it inside.”

“We’ll make it.”

I wanted to appear as co-operative as I could just then, because, although I was sick with panic, I had thought of a way of stopping them that they couldn’t blame on me-at least in a dangerous way. I still had my guide’s license. Tufan had warned me against attracting attention to myself as a guide in case I was challenged and had to show it. He had said that, because I was a foreigner, that would cause trouble with museum guards. Well, trouble with museum guards was the one kind of trouble I needed at that moment; and the more the better.

Fischer and I began to walk towards the gate. Miller was within a few yards of it, and I saw a guide approach him. Miller walked straight on in without a glance at the man.

“That’s the way,” Fischer said, and began to walk a little faster.

The hooks began to thump against my legs. “Not so fast,” I said; “if these hooks swing too much they’ll show.”

He slowed down again immediately.

“You needn’t worry about the guides,” I said. “I’ve got my license. I’ll be your guide.”

As we got near the Gate, I began to give him the set speech, all about the weekly executions, the block, the fountain, the Executioner who was also the Chief Gardener.

The guide who had approached Miller was watching us, so I raised my voice slightly to make sure that he heard me and knew what I was up to. What I hoped was that he would follow us and complain about me to the guard at the gate. Instead, he lost interest and turned away.

It was disappointing, but I had another plan worked out by then.

Just inside the gatehouse there is the counter where you pay to go in. When I got to it, I handed the man three separate lira and said: “Two tickets, please.” At the same time I showed him my guide’s license.

From his point of view I had done three wrong things. I had shown a guide’s license, and yet, by asking for two tickets, revealed that I didn’t know that guides were admitted free; I had given him three lira, which a real guide would have known was enough to buy six tickets; and I had spoken to him in English.

He was a haggard man with a small black mustache and a disagreeable expression. I waited for trouble. It never came. He did absolutely nothing but glance at the license, push across one ticket, take one of the lira, and give me sixty kurush change. It was maddening. I picked the change up very slowly, hoping he would start to think, but he was gazing into space, bored to death.

“Let’s go,” Fischer said.

Out of the corner of my eye I could see Harper approaching the gate. There was nothing for it but to go on. Usually there are one or two guides touting for customers inside the Second Courtyard. In fact, it had been there that I had been challenged three years previously. That episode had ended up in my being jailed for the night. I could only count on the same thing happening again.

Of course, the same thing did not happen again. Because it was the last hour of the museum day, all the courtyard guides were either out with parties of suckers completing tours of the palace or cooling their fat arses in the nearest cafe.

I did my best. As we walked on along the right side of the Second Courtyard, I gave Fischer the set speech on the Seraglio kitchens-all about the Sung, Yuna, and Ming porcelains-but nobody as much as looked at us. Miller had already reached the Gate of Felicity and was standing there gawking at it like a tourist. When he heard our footsteps behind him, he walked through into the Third Courtyard.

I hesitated. Once we were through the gate, the Audience Chamber and the Library of Ahmed the Third would screen us from the buildings across the courtyard that were open to the public. Unless a guard came out of the manuscript library, and there was no reason why one should, there would be nothing to stop us from getting to the door to which Miller had the key.

“Why are you stopping?” Fischer asked.

“He said that we were to stop here.”

“Only if there were guides watching.”

There were footsteps on the paving stones behind us. I turned my head. It was Harper.

“Keep going, Arthur,” he said; “just keep going.” His voice was quite low, but it had an edge to it.

He was only about six paces away now, and I knew suddenly from the look on his face that I dare not let him reach me.

So I went on with Fischer through the Gate of Felicity. I suppose that obedience to Harper had become almost as instinctive with me as breathing.

As he had said, the walk was exactly sixty paces. Nobody stopped us. Nobody noticed us. Miller already had the door open when Fischer and I got there. All I remember about the outside of the door was that it had wood moldings on it arranged in an octagon pattern. Then, with Fischer behind me, I was standing in a narrow stone passage with a vaulted ceiling and Miller was relocking the door.

The passage was about twenty feet long and ended in a blank wall with a coiled fire hose inside a glass-fronted box fastened to it. The spiral stairway to the roof was of iron and had the name of a German company on it. The same company had supplied the fire hose. Miller walked to the bottom of the staircase and looked up at it appreciatively. “A very clever girl,” he said.

Fischer shrugged. “For someone who interpreted air photos for the Luftwaffe it was not difficult,” he said. “A blind man could have seen this on the enlarged photo she had. It was I who had to find the way to it, and I who had to get a key and make all the other arrangements.”

Miller chuckled. “It was she who had the idea, Hans, and Karl who worked out the arrangements. We are only the technicians. They are the artists.”

He seemed to be enjoying himself thoroughly, and looked more wolfish than ever. I felt like being sick.

Fischer sat on the stairs. Miller took off his coat and shirt and unwound the tackle from about his skinny waist. There didn’t seem any point in being uncomfortable as well as frightened, so I unbuttoned, too, and got rid of the sling and anchor rope. He attached them to the tackle. Then, he took a black velvet bag from his pocket. It was about the size of a man’s sock and had a drawstring at the top and a spring clip. He attached the clip to one of the hooks on the sling.

“Now,” he said, “we are ready.” He looked at his watch. “In an hour or so Giulio and Enrico will be on their way.”

“Who are they?” I asked.

“Friends who will bring the boat for us,” said Miller.

“A boat? How can a boat reach us?”

“It doesn’t,” said Fischer. “We reach the boat. You know the yards along the shore by the old city wall, where the boats land the firewood?”

I did. Istanbul is a wood-burning city in winter. The firewood yards stretch for nearly a mile along the coast road southeast of Seraglio Point, where the water is deep enough for coasters to come close inshore. But we were two miles from there.

“Do we fly?”

“The Volkswagen will call for us.” He grinned at Miller.

“Hadn’t you better tell me more than that?”

“That is not our part of the operation,” Miller said. “Our part is this. When we leave the Treasury we go quietly back over the kitchens until we come to the wall of the Courtyard of the Janissaries above the place where the cars park during the day. The wall is only twenty feet high and there are trees there to screen us when we lower ourselves to the ground with the tackle. Then…”

“Then,” Fischer broke in, “we take a little walk to where the Volkswagen will be waiting.”

I answered Miller. “Is Mr. Fischer to lower himself to the ground with one hand?”

“He will seat himself in the sling. Only one hand is needed to hold on to the buckles.”

“Even in the outer courtyard we are still inside the walls.”

“There will be a way through them.” He dismissed the subject with an impatient wave of his hand and looked about him for a place to sit down. There was only the iron staircase. He examined the steps of it. “Everything here is very dirty,” he complained. “That these people do not all die of disease is incredible. Immunity, perhaps. There was a city here even before Constantine’s. Two thousand years or more of plague are in this place-cholera, bubonic, la verole, dysentery.”

“Not any more, Leo,” said Fischer; “they have even cleaned the drains.”

“It is all waiting in the dust,” Miller insisted gloomily.

He arranged the nylon rope so as to make a seat on the stairs before he sat down. His exuberance had gone. He had remembered about germs and bacteria.

I sat on the bottom step wishing that I had an irrational anxiety like his to occupy my mind, instead of the real and immediate fears that occupied my lungs, my heart, and my stomach.

At five o’clock, bells were sounded in the courtyards and there were one or two distant shouts. The guards were herding everyone out and closing up for the night.

I started to light a cigarette, but Miller stopped me. “Not until it is dark,” he said. “The sun might happen to illuminate the smoke before it dispersed above the roof. It is better also that we talk no more. It will become very quiet outside and we do not know how the acoustics of a place like this may work. No unnecessary risks.”

That was what Tufan had said. I wondered what he was doing. He must, I thought, already know that he had lost everyone and everything, except Miss Lipp and the Lincoln. The Peugeot would have radioed in. The question was whether the surveillance people had remembered the Volkswagen van or not. If they had, there would be a faint possibility of Tufan’s being able to trace it using the police; but it seemed very faint. I wondered how many thousand Volkswagen vans there were in the Istanbul area. Of course, if they had happened to notice the registration number-if this, if that. Fischer began to snore and Miller tapped his leg until he stopped.

The patch of sky at the top of the staircase turned red and then gray and then blue-black. I lit a cigarette and saw Miller’s teeth gleaming yellowly in the light of the match.

“What about flashlights?” I whispered. “We won’t be able to see a thing.”

“There will be a third-quarter moon.”

At about eight there was a murmur of voices from one or other of the courtyards-in there it was impossible to tell which-and a man laughed. Presumably, the night watchmen were taking over. Then there was silence again. A plane going over became an event, something to think about. Was it preparing to land at Yesilkoy airport or had it just taken off?

Fischer produced a flask of water with a metal cup on the base, and we each had a drink. Another age went by. Then there was the faint sound of a train pulling out of the Sirkeci station and chugging round the sharp curve at Seraglio Point below. Its whistle sounded shrilly, like a French train, and then it began to gather speed. As the sound died away, a light glared, almost blinding me. Miller had a pen light in his hand and was looking at his watch. He sighed contentedly.

“We can go,” he whispered.

“The light a moment, Leo,” Fischer said.

Miller held the light up for him. With his good hand, Fischer eased a small snub-nosed revolver from his breast pocket, worked the safety catch, and then transferred the thing to a side pocket. He gave me a meaning look as he patted it.

Miller got up, so I stood up, too. He came down the steps with the tackle and looped it around one shoulder like a bandolier. “I will go first,” he said; “Arthur will follow me. Then you, Hans. Is there anything else? Ah yes, there is.”

He went and relieved himself in the corner by the fire hose. When he had finished Fischer did the same thing.

I was smoking. “Put that out now,” Miller said. He looked at Fischer. “Are you ready?”

Fischer nodded; then, an instant before the light went out, I saw him cross himself. That is something I don’t understand. I mean, he was asking a blessing, or whatever it is, when he was going to commit a sin.

Miller went up the stairs slowly. At the top he paused, looking all round, getting his bearings. Then he bent his head down to mine.

“Karl said that you may have vertigo,” he said softly; “but it is all quite simple. Follow me at three paces. Do not look sideways or back, only ahead. There is one step down from this ironwork. Then there is lead sheet. I will step down, go three paces, and wait a little so that your eyes can adjust themselves.”

I had been so long in the darkness that the intermittent glare of the pen light had been almost painful. Outside on the roof, the moonlight seemed to make everything as bright as day; too bright for my liking; I was certain that someone would see us from the ground and start shooting. Fischer must have had the same feeling. I heard him swear under his breath behind me.

Miller’s teeth gleamed for an instant; then he started to move forward past the three cupolas over the quarters of the White Eunuchs. There was a space of about five feet between the cupolas and the edge of the roof. Staying close to the cupolas and looking only ahead as Miller had instructed me, I had no sensation at all of being on a high place. For a while, my only problem was keeping up with him. Harper had compared him to a fly. To me he looked more like an earwig as he slithered round the last of the three cupolas and scuttled on, leaning inward over the slight hump in the center of the roof. He stopped only once. He had crossed the roof of the Audience Chamber, to avoid what looked like three large fanlights over the Gate of Felicity, and was returning to the Eunuchs’ roof when another fanlight appeared and the flat surface narrowed suddenly. The way across was only about two feet wide.

I saw the ground below and started to go down on my knees-I might just have been able to crawl across by myself, I suppose-when he reached back, gripped my forearm, and drew me after him. It was done so quickly that I had no time to get sick and lose my balance. His fingers were like steel clamps.

Then, we were level with the kitchens and I could see the conical bases of their ten squat chimneys stretching away to the right. Miller led the way to the left. The flat space here was over thirty feet wide and I had no trouble. There was a four-foot rise then, which brought us over the big room with the exhibition of miniatures and glass in it. Ahead, I could see the whole of one cupola and, beyond it, the top of another smaller one. The smaller one, I knew, was the one on the roof of the Treasury Museum.

Miller began to move more slowly and carefully as he skirted the big cupola. Every now and again he stopped. Then I saw him lower himself over a ledge. When his feet found whatever there was below, only his head and shoulders were showing.

I was following round the big cupola, and had started to move away from it towards the ledge, when Miller turned and beckoned to me. He had moved a yard or two towards the outer edge of the roof, so I changed direction towards him. That is how it was that when I came to the ledge I saw too much.

There was the vaulted roof of the Treasury, and the cupola with a flat space about four feet wide all around the base of it. That is where Miller was standing. But beyond him there was nothing, just a great black emptiness, and then, horribly far away below, the faint white hairline of a road in the moonlight.

I felt myself starting to lose my balance and fall, so I knelt down quickly and clung to the lead surface of the roof. Then I began retching. I couldn’t help it; I’ve never been able to help it. From what I’ve heard from people who get seasick, that must be the same sort of feeling; only my feeling about heights is worse.

I had nothing in my stomach to throw up, but that didn’t make any difference. My stomach went on trying to throw up.

Fischer began kicking me and hissing at me to be silent. Miller reached up and dragged me by the ankles down over the ledge, then made me sit with my back against the side of the cupola. He shoved my head hard between my knees. I heard a scuffling noise as he helped Fischer down off the ledge, then their whispering.

“Will he be all right?”

“He will have to be.”

“The fat fool.” Fischer kicked me as I started to retch again.

Miller stopped him. “That will do no good. You will have to help. As long as he gets no nearer the edge it may be possible.”

I opened my eyes just enough to see Miller’s feet. He was laying out the anchor rope round the cupola and presently he pulled one end of it down between my back and the part I was leaning against. A moment or two later, he crouched down in front of me and began knotting the rope. When that was done, he slipped on the upper block of the lifting tackle. Then he brought his head close to mine.

“Can you hear me, Arthur?”

“Yes.”

“If you didn’t have to move, you’d feel safe here, wouldn’t you?”

“I don’t know.”

“You are safe now, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Then listen. You can handle the tackle from here. Open your eyes and look up at me.”

I managed to do so. He had taken his coat off and looked skinnier than ever. “Hans will be at the edge,” he went on, “and with his good hand will hold my coat in place there. In that way the ropes will run smoothly over it and not be cut. You understand?”

“Yes.”

“And you will not have to go near the edge-only let out rope and pull in when you are told.”

“I don’t know. Supposing I let it slip.”

“Well, that would be bad, because then you would have only Hans to deal with, and he would certainly make sure that you slipped, too.”

The teeth, as he smiled, were like rows of gravestones. Suddenly he picked up a coil of rope from the lead beside him and put it in my hands.

“Get ready to take the strain,” he said, “and remember that it stretches. I don’t mind how slowly I go down or how quickly I come up. Hans will give you the signals to lower, stop, and raise.” He pointed to a ridge in the lead. “Brace your feet against this. So.”

The day Mum died, the Imam came and intoned verses from the Koran. Now taste the torment of the fire you called a lie.

Miller slipped the end of the rope around my chest and knotted it firmly. Then he hauled in the slack. “Are you ready, Arthur?”

I nodded.

“Then look at Hans.”

I let my eyes go to Fischer’s legs and then his body. He was lying on his right side with his shoulder on Miller’s coat and his right hand on the tackle ready to guide it. I dared not look any nearer the edge. I knew I would pass out if I did.

I saw Miller put a pair of gloves on, step into the sling, then crouch down and move out of sight.

“Now,” Fischer whispered.

The strain didn’t come suddenly; the stretch in the nylon had to be taken up first. My hands were slippery with sweat and I had looped the rope round the sleeve of my left arm to give me more purchase. When the full strain came, the loop tightened like a tourniquet. Then the pressure fluctuated and I could feel Miller bouncing in the sling as the tackle settled down.

“Steady.” Fischer held his right hand palm downwards over the tackle.

The movement in the block by the anchor rope beside me ceased.

“Lower slowly.”

I let the rope slide round my arm and the bouncing began again.

“Keep going, smoothly.”

I went on paying out the rope. There was less bouncing now, just an occasional vibration. Miller was using his feet to steady himself against the wall as he descended. I watched the coil of rope beside me growing smaller and had another terror to fight. The end of the rope was tied round my chest. I couldn’t untie it now without letting go. If there were not enough rope in the coil to reach the shutter below, Fischer would make me move nearer to the edge.

There was about six feet left to go when he raised his hand. “Stop. Hold still.”

I was so relieved that I didn’t notice the pain in my arm from the tightened loop; I just closed my eyes and kept my head down.

There were slight movements on the rope, and, after a moment or two, faint clicking sounds as he went to work on the metal shutters. Minutes went by. My left arm began to go numb. Then, there was another sound from below, a sort of hollow tapping. It only lasted a moment, before Fischer hissed at me. I opened my eyes again.

“Lower a little, very slowly.”

As I obeyed I felt the tension in the rope suddenly slacken. Miller was inside.

“Rest.”

I loosened the rope on my arm and massaged it until the pins and needles began. I didn’t try to massage them away. They kept my mind on my arm and away from other things, such as the day the games master had made me dive. When you got into the cadet corps you had to be able to swim, and, once a week, all the boys in each squad who couldn’t do so were marched to the Lewisham Public Baths to take lessons. When you had learned to swim you had to dive. I didn’t mind the swimming part, but when my head went under water I was always afraid of drowning. For a time I didn’t have to, because I kept telling the games master that I had bad ears; but then he said that I would have to get a doctor’s certificate. I tried to write one myself, but I didn’t know the proper words to use and he caught me out. I expected him to send me with a note to The Bristle, but instead he made me dive. I say “dive.” What he did was pick me up by one arm and a leg and throw me in the deep end; and he kept on doing it. Every time I managed to get out, even while I was still choking up water, he would throw me in again. One of the attendants at the Baths had to stop him in the end. He was married, so I wrote a letter to his wife telling her how he messed about with certain boys in the changing cubicles and pestered them to feel him. I was careless though, because I used the same handwriting as I had used on the certificate, and he knew for certain it was me. He couldn’t prove it, of course, because he had torn up the certificate. He took me into a lobby and accused me and called me an “unspeakable little cad”; but that was all he did. He was really shaken. When I realized it, I could have kicked myself. If I had known that he actually had been messing about with boys in the cubicles, I could have put the police onto him. As it was, I had simply warned him to be more careful. He had thin, curly brown hair with an officer’s mustache, and walked as if he had springs on the soles of his feet. The term after that he left and went to another school.

Fischer hissed at me and I opened my eyes.

“Take the strain.”

I wrapped the rope round my waist this time so that I could use my weight to push away from the edge if necessary.

“Ready?”

I nodded and held on tight. There was a jerk as Miller got his weight into the sling again. Then Fischer nodded.

“Up.”

I started to pull. The friction of the rope against the coat on the edge of the roof made it terribly hard. The sweat ran into my eyes. Twice I had to stop and knot the rope round my waist so that I could wipe my hands and ease the cramp in my fingers; but the coil got larger again and then Fischer began to use his good hand on one of the ropes in the tackle.

“Slow… slower… stop.”

Suddenly the tackle ran free and Miller, grinning, was crawling across the roof towards me. He patted my leg.

“Merci, mon cher collegue,” he said.

I shut my eyes and nodded. Through the singing in my ears I could hear him reporting to Fischer as he gathered in the tackle.

“All those we counted on and a few more to garnish the dish. I even fastened the shutters again.”

I felt him untying the rope from my chest. When I opened my eyes he was clipping the velvet bag to his belt. Fischer was fumbling with the knots in the anchor rope. I crawled over and began to help him. All I wanted was to get away, and I knew that they would have to help me.

Fischer with his injured hand needed help to get back onto the upper roof level. Then, Miller somehow managed to heave me up high enough for me to claw my way over the ledge. I crawled then on my hands and knees to the shelter of the big cupola. By the time Miller reached me, I was able to stand up.

We started back, as we had started out, with Miller in the lead. This time, however, there was no turn to make. We left the White Eunuchs’ quarters on our right and went on over the kitchen roofs to the wall by the Gate of Salvation. There was one awkward place-for me, that is-by the old water tower, but I somehow got past it on my hands and knees; then we were on the wall overlooking the Courtyard of the Janissaries.

There was a row of tall plane trees close to the wall, and Miller used an overhanging branch as an anchor for the tackle. He lowered Fischer first, in the sling, and then me; but he wouldn’t use the sling himself, because that would have meant leaving the tackle in the tree. It was not the tackle itself he cared about, he said; he didn’t want to leave any traces behind of how the job had been done. He got off the wall by looping the anchor rope over the branch and sliding down it. Doubled like that, it wasn’t quite long enough to reach the ground, so he dropped the last six feet, pulling one end of the rope with him. He landed as lightly as a cat and began gathering in the rope. After all he had done, he wasn’t even out of breath.

Fischer took over the lead now, and headed for the outer wall on a line parallel with the road the tourist cars used during the day. Miller walked behind me. After a minute or two, we could see the lights of the guard room beside the huge Bab-i-Humayun Gate and Fischer slowed down. We had been walking in the shadow of a row of trees, but now they came to an end. Fifty yards across the road to the right was the bulk of St. Irene; ahead the road forked, the right prong going to the gate, the left prong narrowing and curving inward down the hill towards the sea.

Fischer stopped, staring at the gate.

It was no more than fifty yards away and I could see the sentry. He had his carbine slung over his shoulder and was picking his nose.

Fischer put his mouth to my ear. “What time is it?”

“Five to ten.”

“We have time to wait.”

“Wait for what?”

“We have to go left down the hill. The guard changes in five minutes. It will be safer then.”

“Where are we going to?”

“The railroad-where it bridges the wall.”

A section of the railway ran along the shoreline just inside the big wall for about three quarters of a mile; but I knew that there were guard posts at both ends of it. I said so.

He grinned. “Guard posts, yes. But no gates.”

Miller hissed a warning.

An oblong of light glowed as the door of the guard room opened. For an instant two men were outlined in the doorway. Then, as the business of changing sentries began, Fischer touched my arm.

“Now.”

He moved forward out of the shadow of the trees and cut across a patch of rough grass to the road. It descended sharply and narrowed to little more than a track. Within thirty seconds the top of the slope hid us from the sentries. Fischer glanced back to see that we were with him, and then walked on at a more leisurely pace.

Ahead was a strip of sea and beyond it the lights of Selimiye and Haydarpasar on the Asian side. Other lights moved across the water-a ferry and small fishing boats. In the daylight, tourists with movie cameras waste hundreds of feet of film on the view. I suppose it’s very beautiful. Personally, I never want to see it again-in any sort of light.

After a couple of minutes’ walking we came to another track, which led off to the right towards the outer wall. Fischer crossed it and went straight on down over a stretch of wasteland. There were piles of rubble from archaeological diggings, and part was terraced as if it had at some time been cultivated as a vineyard. At the bottom was the railway embankment.

There was a wooden fence running alongside it, and Miller and I waited while Fischer found the damaged section which he had chosen on an earlier reconnaissance as the best way through. It was about thirty yards to the right. We clambered over some broken boards to the side of the embankment and walked along the drainage ditch. Five minutes later it was possible to see the big wall again. We walked on another hundred feet, and there the embankment ended. If we were to go any farther we had to climb up and walk along the track over the bridge.

Fischer stopped and turned. “What is the time?”

“Ten-fifteen,” said Miller. “Where is the guard post exactly?”

“On the other side of the bridge, a hundred meters from here.” He turned to me. “Now listen. A train will be coming soon. When it starts to cross the bridge we go to the top of the embankment. As soon as the last wagon has passed us, we start to follow along the tracks at walking speed. When we have gone about twenty meters we will hear a loud explosion ahead. Then we start to run, but not too fast. Have you ever smelled tear gas?”

“Yes.”

“You will smell it again, but do not worry. It is our tear gas, not theirs. And there will be smoke, too, also ours. The train will have just gone through. The guard post will not know what is happening. They may think the train has blown up. It does not matter. The tear gas and the smoke will make it hard for them to think, or see. If any of them tries too hard he will get a bullet or a plastic grenade to discourage him. In the confusion we run through. And then, as I told you, the Volkswagen will be waiting for us.”

“What about our confusion?” I said. “How do we see where to go with tear gas and smoke?”

Miller nodded. “I asked the same question, my friend. We should have had respirators. But Karl’s argument was good. With so much to conceal, how could we carry respirators, too?”

“I made the experiment,” Fischer said defensively. “I tried to take a respirator in. They stopped me because of the bulge in my pocket. They thought I was trying to smuggle a camera into the Seraglio. They are strict about that, as you know. It was embarrassing.”

“How did you explain it?” Miller asked.

“I said I was a doctor.”

“They believed you?”

“If you say you are a doctor, people will believe anything. We need not worry where to go. We simply follow the rail tracks and leave everything to Karl. We have done our work for this evening. Now we only wait for our train.”

We waited twenty-five minutes.

It was a mixed train, Fischer said, carrying newspapers, mail-bags, local freight, and a few passengers to the small towns between Istanbul and Pehlivankoy. It chuffed towards the bridge as noisily and importantly as the Orient Express. There was a slight offshore breeze blowing. The thick black smoke from the engine rolled along our side of the embankment and engulfed us.

“ Los! Vorwarts! ” Fischer shouted, and, coughing and spluttering, Miller and I scrambled after him up the embankment.

For half a minute we stayed there with the train wheels clacking over a joint in the rails about three feet from our noses. Then, the last axle box went by.

“Los!” said Fischer again, and we were stumbling along the side of the tracks between the jutting ends of the ties and the parapet of the bridge.

We must have been about seventy yards from the guard post when the concussion grenade went off, and even at that distance the detonation made my ears sing. In front of me Fischer began to trot. Almost immediately he tripped over something and fell. I heard him gasp with pain as his left arm hit a tie; but he was on his feet and moving again before I got to him.

There was shouting ahead now, and I could hear the plunking, sizzling noise of tear-gas and smoke grenades detonating. The train smoke was still billowing around, but a moment later I got the first whiff of chemical smoke. Three yards more and I saw the white bandage on Fischer’s right hand go to his forehead. Then, I was in the tear gas, too, and the first excruciating reaction of the sinuses began to spread into my eyes. I blundered on, choking. As the tears began to blind me, another concussion grenade went off. Then, a shape loomed up out of the smoke and a respirator goggled at me; a hand gripped my arm and steered me to the right. I had a vague, tear-blurred impression of a lighted room and a man in uniform with his hands above his drooping head leaning against a wall. Then, the arm belonging to the hand was supporting me as I stumbled down a long flight of steps.

I was out of the smoke now and I could just see the door of the Volkswagen van. The arm shoved me towards it. I almost fell inside. Fischer was already there, hawking and coughing. More grenades were exploding on the bridge above as Miller scrambled in after me. Then there was a sound of running feet and the men in the respirators piled in. Someone pressed the starter. A moment later the van was on the move. I was crouched on the floor against one of the empty packing cases and somebody was treading on my feet. The stink of tear gas was everywhere. I heard Harper’s voice from the front passenger seat.

“Everything okay, Leo?”

Miller was coughing and chuckling at the same time. “The dogs have fed and clothed themselves,” he wheezed.